


Helpless by the river

by SolainRhyo



Series: Becoming Boone [4]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Christmas Gift Fic, F/M, Geldauran's perception of Boone changes, Lots of Angst, Smut, Solas is dead, Still a prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 09:36:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21875377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolainRhyo/pseuds/SolainRhyo
Summary: The world tore Boone apart. Geldauran offers to make her whole again.(This is a companion piece to my main Solavelyan fic,The Unwritten End.)
Relationships: Female Human Inquisitor/Geldauran, Female Inquisitor/Geldauran, Female Trevelyan/Geldauran, Inquisitor/Evanuris, Inquisitor/Geldauran, Solas/Female Human Inquisitor, Solas/Female Trevelyan, Solas/Inquisitor, Trevelyan/Geldauran
Series: Becoming Boone [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/901341
Comments: 3
Kudos: 56





	Helpless by the river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chansondegeste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chansondegeste/gifts).



> This was a Christmas fic for **Chansondegeste** , who has been wonderfully supportive of my Dragon Age stories (among others) even though I haven't updated them in forever, who I've had the great pleasure of getting to know outside of fandom, who I look forward to jumping headlong into other fandoms with. Merry Christmas!
> 
> _(This fic is a companion piece to my Solas/Trevelyan fic,[The Unwritten End](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5890594/chapters/13577002).)_
> 
> **WARNING: If you don't like Geldauran from my other fic, you probably shouldn't read this.**

Geldauran made her watch the execution.

It was over in a fraction of a second, the rise and fall of the makeshift headsman’s axe, and once it was done she shattered. The Dread Wolf was slain. The once-Inquisitor was undone.

“You are better for it,” the Evanuris told her later, reining his horse alongside hers. She remained silent, staring ahead out of eyes red and swollen from muted weeping, from eyes that leaked tears still. When she wouldn’t acknowledge him he leaned over, seizing Hob’s reins and pulling the gelding to a halt.

“Your grief is misplaced, Evelyn. All you need do is recall all he was responsible for to realize that.”

Boone still refused to look at him, swallowing hard. Grief and anguish had carved deep hollows into her face, paled her skin. She looked on the verge of collapse. It would not take much to push her to that brink. She could feel his gaze as he awaited a response, as he likely determined what cruel arrangement of words would apply the precise amount of pressure needed for her to break. For the first time since knowing him, Geldauran chose to show her mercy. He released Hob’s reins, nudging his mount into movement, riding past her. As he left she bowed her head, a fresh wave of despair enveloping her. Tears spattered onto the cantle of the saddle as Hob lurched into movement for fear of being left behind.

**.x.**

Time did not lessen the pain, not at first. While parts of the world reeled from the death of Fen’Harel, others remained unperturbed—notably the part that the _Mien’Harel_ occupied. The wilderness enveloped them, sheltered them, shielded them. Boone simply existed, not a part of them and no longer herself. She had thought Geldauran would follow through on his statements and kill her now that Solas was gone. She wanted him to. He did not, for reasons he never offered and that she never asked. He did not set her free, either, his reasoning a mystery he was content to keep to himself. She remained a captive of elvhen trapped out of their time, stranded in a world they despised.

She attempted to leave. It was not an escape, not entirely—she merely walked out of the camp one evening when most were gathered near the center for the evening meal. She was fairly certain her exit had been observed, was completely certain pursuit would follow. She made it farther than she assumed she would; dawn’s blush was evident by the time the sound of pursuing horses became audible. She’d been following the soft roar of a river nearby and as the noise of hoof beats trampling through underbrush became louder she made a rush for it, navigating around and over trees until the rocks of of the riverbank clattered beneath her feet. The water was bracing as it seeped through her boots, enough so to give her pause, but she waded further until it lined her thighs. The current was powerful, the river flooded with run-off from a succession of autumn storms. It would not take much for her to lose her balance.

Geldauran’s voice brought her to a halt. She half-turned. He led two others, all of them mounted. He asked, “Has your curiosity been assuaged?”

She’d been allowed to leave, then. She’d suspected as much. She braced herself against the water’s pull, pitched her voice to carry over the sound of the river.

“Why?”

“To give you something to do. You seemed in need of a distraction.”

That he could still find ways to hurt her seemed absurd after everything that had transpired. Geldauran dismounted, took a step in her direction. She backed away, swaying as the water swirled around her waist. Any further and she’d be swept away. Her eyes skimmed along the rivers course, deliberating the possibility it offered.

“You long to follow him, do you?”

She took her time returning her gaze to his face. “What is left?”

He tilted his head slightly to one side. “A great many things, if you would only dare to consider them.”

Her eyes narrowed. She could think of only one thing he could offer to her now. He met her look without expression and after a moment, extended his hand. “There is still a life left for you to live, Evelyn.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You do,” he said, shaking his head with something similar to exasperation. “That you’re still alive proves that.”

She was so tired of his words. He wielded them much the way Solas used to, probing at her defenses, using them to prod her into realizations she did not want, did not need. How long had it been since her life had been her own, entirely free of interference from anyone or anything? She’d been a pawn for the greater part of her life, first under the influence of the Anchor and then from every subsequent event or circumstance. Even during her time with Thom, wandering Ferelden and Orlais as a scrivener, she’d never really been able to steer her life in the direction she wanted. Nothing had changed with Solas’ death in that regard save that she was subject now to the whims of Geldauran.

“Everything is the same,” she told him, aware that behind him the two other _Mien’Harel_ had dismounted, likely in preparation to retrieve her.

“Everything _can_ be different.”

She shook her head. There was no point in further discourse. She took another two steps backward and surrendered to the water. It swept her up with terrifying swiftness and a force she hadn’t properly anticipated, flooding over her and numbing her with its coldness. She thrashed, flailed, struggled to keep her head above water even though her intent in letting the river carry her away had been to achieve an opposite goal. Panic overrode her resolve but she fought against it, stilling her movements, letting the eddies buffet her about. She rapidly blinked water of her eyes, was unable to suppress the instinct to keep her head above water. The water rushed her into rocks, into dead trees caught up in the currents. Pain joined panic.

Something caught at her clothing. A rock, a branch, but no—it pulled. Reeled her in. Hands, she realized, and was able to catch a glimpse of Geldauran before water rolled over her head. She reached for him, fumbling for his arm. He roped his arm around her waist, towing her through the water with powerful strokes rendered awkward by his cargo. He hauled her roughly onto the bank, where she collapsed onto her side. He sat next to her, breathing hard.

“You chose this,” he told her long minutes later as she sat upright, pushing back sopping tendrils of hair. “You reached for me.”

She felt the weight of his stare but kept her own focused on the stones of the riverbank. Whatever words she might have used in defense would have been paltry and…

_Untrue._

She felt his fingers brushing along the length of her arm and looked down to see that from wrist to elbow the flesh was abraded. It barely stung now, subdued under the influence of her fear and alarm. Later the pain would establish itself more firmly. Moisture rolled down her face, droplets released from her hair mostly, some of it tears. The realization of what could have just been, of the chance she would likely never have again, seized her and would not let go. _How had it come to this?_

“Come,” Geldauran said, rising to his feet. He held out his hand and when she didn’t take it, he gripped her by the elbow and hauled her to her feet. His horse stood several feet away, head down as it nosed the ground for some hint of food. The other two elvhen she could see upriver, holding their positions as presumably ordered. He gave a low whistle to which his gelding immediately responded. Boone waited as he mounted and when he held out his hand she took it, allowing him to pull her up until she was seated behind him. He clucked the horse into motion and she braced herself with her hands on its rump, staring unseeing at the river as they rode back toward camp.

She had been so close. Life wasn’t really life anymore—hadn’t been for quite some time. She was a leaf caught in conflicting currents, warring designs fabricated by those far older and powerfully ambitious. Who was she beyond the roles she’d been led or forced into assuming? She was in name Evelyn Trevelyan, but in truth that woman had become something else the moment she’d been stricken with the Anchor. She was Boone no longer, either. Boone had died on the Storm Coast along with Movda and Thom. Whatever sliver of herself had survived those events was gone now, too, had vanished the very instant Solas died. She was a vessel, empty and worn and lined with fractures. She was lost.

**.x.**

In the tent they shared, Geldauran directed she sit upon her cot. After the execution he’d granted her her own again. A small blessing, that, not having to spend nights awake and afraid simply because of his proximity. He left the tent and she remained where she was, cold and still dripping from the river. She wished she felt anything, anything other than this unwelcome stillness, this perpetual shroud of affectlessness that had engulfed her entirely. She wished… so many things, and all of them impossible now.

Geldauran returned, carrying a leather pack in one hand. She watched as he set it upon the small table, as he rifled through it. Her gaze dropped as he approached. He settled himself beside her on the cot and it dipped beneath the additional weight. She said nothing when he took hold of her arm and extended it, remained silent as he went about cleaning the scrapes with a dampened cloth. His ministrations were a contradiction to the way she’d come to know him. He’d hurt her before, willingly and without qualm. He’d slain those she considered family. He’d assured her of unrelenting pain. He’d executed Solas. And yet he was now tending her wounds with tender care, applying a salve he’d likely acquired from Nadrimassa. His behavior now, incongruous as it was, was also somehow not at all surprising. Geldauran was many things, foremost among them a riddle.

“You told Solas you would kill me,” she chose to remind him, thrown off by the way he treated her now in light of everything else.

He did not pause in winding a strip of linen around her arm. “Yes.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“Because I chose otherwise.”

Her mouth thinned at his non-answer. He paused in what he was doing to look at her. “You interest me, Evelyn.”

“Why?” When he didn’t immediately answer, she persisted, “I’m human and you detest my kind. You made that clear.”

“Perhaps you are an exception.”

She shook her head. “I’m not. You know it. You have told me as much.”

“I have,” he admitted readily. His pale gaze upon her was steadfast and it was a struggle for her to hold it.

“Tell me _why,”_ she entreated in a low voice, reaching for some answer that would give her even a modicum of sense in a world that no longer made any.

“Would the answers change anything? Would you find yourself compelled to live if I gave them?”

A word was poised to fall from her mouth but she couldn’t tell whether it was an affirmative or a denial. Afraid of it, afraid of what it might reveal, she choked it back. He observed her internal struggle before returning his attention to her dressing her wounds.

“You still mourn Fen’Harel.”

“Yes,” she said, voice cracking. “Yes.”

“He used you. Do you deny that?” She said nothing, did not need to say anything. He pressed on, “He hurt you, at times deliberately, in order to fulfill his goals. He confined you within the city, provided you with only the pretense of free will. Am I wrong?”

Her eyes were opened wide in an effort to ward off a resurgence of tears. She shook her head, a jerky and reluctant movement because he spoke the truth, because she didn’t want him to.

“He tore down the Veil, allowed demons and other denizens of the Fade to pour into this world, into _your_ world.”

“And you,” she said without thinking.

“And me,” he confirmed with a nod. He finished fastening her binding, returning his eyes to her face. “I have not forgotten that. But we speak now of you. You loved him despite it all.”

“I loved him,” she replied, the words wavering, “before it all.”

“And after.”

She ducked her head, having lost her battle with her tears. He continued. “He’s gone. He no longer holds influence over you. You are free to simply live without being Lady Trevelyan or the former Inquisitor.”

“I am not free—”

“Free to be who you wish to be,” he amended, tipping her chin up with the backs of his knuckles. “Here you are not anyone. Boone and Evelyn can be laid to rest, if you wish it. Leave them behind, leave their remorse and regret behind. Find new ways to exist.”

She blinked slowly. “You still won’t let me go.”

“No.”

“Why?”

He surprised her, lowering his gaze briefly. The shake of his head was almost negligible, his sigh nearly soundless. His smile when he looked at her again was wry. “Because I do not wish to.”

There was an admission in that statement, an admission she knew he did not want to give, an admission she did not want to hear. His hand at her chin moved, fingers gliding over the line of her jaw, thumb grazing the swell of her lower lip. Her heart seized before unsteadily resuming its rhythm. She reached up with her artificial hand, grasping his wrist in an effort to anchor herself against all that was happening, against the chaos that reigned in her mind.

“I’ve killed many,” he told her, the pad of his thumb hovering at the corner of her mouth. “Before the Veil and after. You know what I have done. You know what I am.” He transferred his touch, lifting his hand to push back still-wet strands of her hair. His eyes centered on hers. “You’re not fighting me. Why?”

 _Because I can fight no longer. Because I am tired. Because there is nothing left to fight for._ She stared back at him, mute and afraid and—

“You’re curious,” he said softly, correctly interpreting the gamut of emotions stampeding through her. “Lonely.”

“You can’t possibly—” she started, but her voice failed her. She moistened her lips, swallowed, tried again. “What are you saying?”

He kissed her, a swift and unexpected movement that had her clutching at his upper arms in astonishment. His lips against hers were firm, unyielding and when he drew away her exhale was one of ragged shock. A moment passed before she realized her hands were still on his arms and she yanked them back, curling them into fists that she pressed against her thighs.

“So—you’re suggesting we… that in doing so I’ll…” She couldn’t finish any of those thoughts.

“I offer pleasure,” he said outright, “and comfort, if only you’ll allow yourself to accept them.”

“How can you—after _everything—?”_

“I’ve told you those reasons. What’s done is done, Evelyn. You can choose to linger on memories and ghosts as you have been, or you can choose—”

“You?” she interrupted in a tone that should have been incredulous. It bothered her that it wasn’t.

“Me,” he affirmed.

He endured her harried scrutiny without expression. So much had changed. _She_ had changed. He was right in some ways—she could let Boone and Evelyn go, now. A part of her wanted to, yearned to, because what she’d known as those women had ofttimes been harsh and bitter, unwanted lessons in loss and unfairness. She’d loved Solas, yes, sometimes fiercely, sometimes in anguish. Geldauran had delivered the unmitigated truth—Solas had used her to his own end more than once and in doing so, had wounded her grievously. But _this_ was madness—

—a madness part of her craved. Through this she could _feel_ again, even if only for a while. She could be something else, be _someone_ else, banish all that haunted her. It could never be permanent, no—regret was ingrained in her, as much a part of her as her own bones. There was nobody left to judge her save herself. Geldauran, her captor and tormentor and the villain of her story, was offering her a reprieve from the crushing weight that the years had forced her to accept as her burden.

He was reading her thoughts as they flowed over her face in quick procession. He reached for her again, fingers curling around her nape, pulling her closer until his mouth covered hers, until her eyes closed in acceptance. As he tilted her head, coaxing her lips open so that his tongue delved against her own, she found it was suddenly very easy to _forget,_ to focus instead on sensation. Her submission pleased him and his other hand rose to frame the curve of her cheek. She leaned into his palm, softening even further beneath his touch. His mouth left hers eventually, journeying across the line of her jaw and down the column of her neck. She shuddered as his lips ghosted across the flesh of her shoulder and he lingered there before laving a reverse path with his tongue. She couldn’t contain the hum of want low in her throat and hearing it, Geldauran altered his offensive, nipping at her skin in a manner she knew would leave marks.

He stood suddenly, startling her, and he responded to her wordless wide-eyed inquiry with a faint smile. He shrugged out of his shirt, tossing it aside before stepping so close to her that he bumped against her legs. She made to rise but he prevented it by placing a hand on her shoulder. The fingers of his other hand found the laces of her own shirt, deftly undid them. He plucked at the fabric, a prompt for her to shed the garment. She hesitated for only the briefest of moments before shucking it off, letting it fall to the ground. It was suddenly a struggle to look at him but she managed. His gaze roamed the now denuded portion of her body with a look of such intensity it shortened her breath.

“I would see all of you,” he said then, words both thick and quiet. She inhaled deeply and rose. He didn’t move back to allow her room and as she stood one of his hands settled at her waist, drawing her nearer until she was pressed against him, her still-damp flesh against his. His other hand he splayed flat in the space above her breasts, his touch providing a welcome warmth. He kissed her again even as his fingers strayed downward across a swell, as he thumbed one nipple in a manner that made her gasp against his mouth. She was _feeling_ again and it wasn’t sorrow, wasn’t fury, wasn’t despair—it was _living._ It was being worthy. It was being needed in a way that she could never fully fathom by a man she would never fully understand. Driven by this her own hands made themselves busy, fumbling at the ties of his remaining clothing in a manner that clearly earned his approval because his kiss became abruptly fierce, nearly bruising.

They proceeded in this manner, rushed movements and heated exhales until they were both laid bare before each other. There was such appreciation in his blue gaze, one that she marveled at due to what she was and who she was. It seemed he spoke the truth—his perception of her _had_ changed. And as for hers of him—he was to her eyes a beautifully masculine thing, his body leanly muscled, lengths of his black hair draped over his shoulder to fall nearly to his waist. Those eyes were what captivated her most in this moment, blue and ardent and holding her own with the authority that was and always had been his inherent right. That he wanted her was evident in the hard line of his erection as it brushed against her belly and she reached for it, watching as lust etched itself into the refined angles of his face the moment her fingers wrapped around him. She stroked him slowly, savoring the way his breath hitched with every inhale, the way his eyes fluttered closed for just a moment, the way he was allowing her to control him now when he’d been the one to control her for so long. When it became too much, when he came too close, he seized her wrist and pulled her hand away. He shoved her gently down onto the cot, until she was laid out upon it, and he followed her down, parting her legs to nestle himself between them.

She did not expect his dedication to exploration in the span of time that followed. He learned the shape and curve of her with fingers and teeth and tongue, devoting himself to teasing her until she was biting her lip in an effort to stifle the sounds she would otherwise make. Teeth carefully seized, squeezed, and tugged at her nipple; at the same time one of his hands slid down between them, parting her wet folds and touching her in just the right manner in just the right spot that her breath escaped clenched teeth in a stuttering sigh. He slid one finger into her immediately after, joined quickly by another and her nails against his back pressed in with such force that he winced.

When he brought her to climax he swallowed her cry, his lips on hers as she trembled beneath him. He allowed her time to recover, pressing idle kisses against her mouth, jaw, neck, brow. When that particular, elusive brand of euphoria finally began to diminish she shifted, hooking one leg over his in a blatant invitation. He braced himself on his elbows, lifts himself up just enough to get a clear and open look at her face, one of his brows arched in inquiry. She nodded once, nipping at his lower lip as incentive and was rewarded as he guided himself into her slowly, expecting that she might feel pain and striving to alleviate it. She wanted the pain, though, for reasons inexplicable and a little frightening, so she wrapped her other leg around him, pulling him, at the same time whispering, “More.”

He complied without question, thrusting into her fully and forcefully. She mewled, a thready indication of need. His withdrawal was slow, tortuously so. He halted, the tip of his cock just barely within her, bracing himself on one hand while the other crept up to fasten around her neck. His eyes were locked on hers, another question carried within them which she answered with another nod. He plunged back into her, setting a pace that was hard and fast, his fingers around her neck squeezing until they hovered on the threshold of pain.

His arm slid under her suddenly, pulling her up to meet him mid-thrust and it was all that was needed to bring her to the cusp a second time. Her cry was a silent, breathless one that he could feel against his fingers still encircling her neck. He pulled out of her, rearing back, and she had no time to ask why because his hands on her hips were flipping her over until she lay face down. He guided himself into her once again and resumed where he had left off, ramming into her hard enough that she gasped with every thrust. She gripped the sides of the cot, panting, as he fucked her in a manner that was just shy of brutal, in a manner that provided the kind of pain she needed without being too much. He was quickly nearing his own release, his breathing ragged, and he surged into her one final time with a shuddering groan. He nipped sharply at the back of her shoulder as he emptied himself within her, as he kept thrusting through the rolling aftershocks. When it was over he lay where he was, draped atop her and buried inside her, his breath fanning the hair at the nape of her neck.

She let herself drift this way, pleasantly suspended in this temporary bliss. She stiffened when he finally moved, however, pulling himself out of and away from her, rising to his feet. She turned onto her side and watched as he walked across the tent to his own cot, feeling an unwanted but not unexpected sense of disappointment. He’d offered to fuck her and she’d accepted. To expect anything else was folly. And besides, given who they were and what they were, how could there truly be anything else?

He tugged the blanket from his cot, turned, shook it, and laid it out on the ground. He lowered himself onto it, sitting with one knee up, and looked at her expectantly. She rose, feeling the tell-tale trickle of moisture between her thighs as she did so, grabbing her own threadbare blanket and dragging it behind her as she approached. She sat beside him, followed him down when he looped an arm around her waist, and when they were both on their backs she draped the blanket over them both.

“What are we?” she asked, blinking up at the tent’s roof.

“Elf and human.”

“Enemies?”

“If you still wish us to be.”

“If I don’t?”

“Elf and human,” he repeated. She slanted him an irritated glance. He smiled. “Or lovers, if you would prefer.”

“What do you expect from me?”

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Nothing.” At her dubious look he repeated, “Nothing, truly.”

“Will you let me leave?”

“No.” He interrupted her next question. “Do you wish to leave?”

“…No.”

“Do you regret fucking me, Evelyn?”

His choice of language elicited a blush to bloom high in her cheeks. Fixing her eyes upward once more, she replied, “No.”

“Should I believe you?”

She rolled her shoulders in a little shrug. “Likely not.”

“You don’t, though, do you?” He tipped her face to the side so that she had no choice but to look at him. He studied her carefully, thumb stroking over her cheek. “You don’t regret it,” he observed after a long span of moments.

“As you said,” she offered in a voice that was a little tentative and a little afraid, “I am not… _them_ anymore. I don’t have to _be_ them. I can just be…”

“Here,” he suggested, pleased with the course her conviction had taken. “Alive.”

He didn’t miss the flicker of the smile that played around her lips though she worked to suppress it. It should have felt wrong to smile. It should have felt wrong to be here so close to him, with his arm around her, with his voice so near her ear. It should have felt wrong and maybe it did, but not in the way she had expected. Not in the crippling manner of all regret she had become so intimately acquainted with. She had just surrendered her past selves by engaging in this union with the last of the Evanuris—she had laid them both to rest and with them every emotional burden she had shouldered for far too long. Twinges of them would return now and then, she knew. She’d be haunted at times by this choice and the others she _would_ make in the future but guilt and shame would no longer rule her now. She refused to let it be so any longer. She’d be free in the only way left available to her.

Geldauran shifted, holding himself up with arm, pressing his mouth to her collarbone. Her artificial hand lifted lazily, fingers combing through the lengths of his hair until it spilled over his shoulders and onto her. His lips hovered over her breast, his eyes meeting hers, an unspoken and uncharacteristic request for permission.

“Please,” she whispered.

**.x.**


End file.
